The Tutor

(15) Date Night

Date Night . . .

Jennifer laughs from the passenger seat of my Camaro, and turns her eyes to look out the window. The way the streetlights glide onto her skin and then fade out just as quickly as it comes distracts me, and I bite on the inside of my cheek to stop myself from glancing over there.

A laugh escapes my lips as well, as I glance in my rearview mirror to look at the little girl sitting in the backseat. Returning my eyes to the road, I keep an amused smile on my face and wait patiently for her to respond.

Nicole shifts in her seat, and touches a finger to her cheek in thought. She doesn't say anything, but makes "hmmm" noises as if she was trying to solve all of the world's problems. This makes me laugh again, since I had only asked her what her favorite color was.

I picked them up a little over five minutes ago and this little amount of time I spent with them, I felt nothing but comfort. I don't know why, but the entire drive from my house to theirs I felt more nervous than I ever felt about a girl. It was unnatural. But once we were all in the car, and that first 30 seconds of silence passed, everything just felt good.

Nicole wanted to play a game, something to pass the time and it was honestly a good idea coming from someone so young. The game consisted of one person asking a question and the other players then had to give an answer to the question. When each player answers, it gets passed to the next person and the cycle gets repeated with them asking the group a question.

"It's a tie between red, white, and pink," Nicole finally answered after a few moments of hard thinking. "I can't choose between those."

Jennifer shifted in her seat to look in the back at her sister. "You know red and white together makes pink, right?"

"Yes, silly," Nicole responded with a laugh. "But I still like the individual colors."

I raised my eyebrows at that. Did that statement just come from the little girl sitting in the backseat?

I glanced over at Jennifer, and she seemed to catch my eye long enough to nod a response to my mental question. Laughing again, I shook my head in disbelief.

"She's smarter than you think, given her age," Jennifer said, looking out the window again. She heaved a sigh, but it wasn't an annoyed one; it was more of an admirable one.

"Where are we going," Nicole piped up from the backseat, gaining my attention.

My back stiffened in my seat a little, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek. I sensed Jennifer turning in her seat a little to look at me as well, and I felt nervous about the answer I was about to give.

"Well," I began, my voice coming out smaller than I intended. I cleared my throat and Nicole giggled from behind me. "It's a surprise," I told them confidently, a smile slowly spreading across my lips. I slowly dragged my eyes from staring at the tail lights of the car in front of us to look at Jennifer and give a sly smile. I let out a low chuckle before returning my eyes back to the road.

"I don't really like surprises," I heard Jennifer say from beside me. I could feel her intense gaze burning a hole through the side of my face, but I didn't turn to look at her. Instead, I turned half my lips upward in a crooked smile.

"Well that makes it even better, don't you agree?" I asked, glancing at her for a quick second again.

"She really does hate surprises," Nicole piped up from the backseat. "One time, my grandma told me, when Jenny was little they threw her a surprise party at her house with balloons and a cake and ice cream—"

"Hush, Nicole," Jennifer tried to interrupt her. Much to my amusement, Nicole still continued to ramble on.

"—and all of her friends from school showed up too! My grandma said it took so long to decorate the house and to set everything up in her favorite colors, and to bake the cake—"